The free short story, “Mary’s Christmas”, is only available until January 1!

The story itself is in the collection Russell’s War, although unlike that plain print version, this freebie is illustrated,which is fun. Plus, it’s a pdf download, which means you can print it off, or save it, or send it to a friend.

Say, would you like a little something to help nudge you into that old holiday spirit? What about a copy of Mary’s Christmas?

This is a pdf to download, so you can print it off, use it to create an illuminated manuscript, send it to a friend, you name it. Plus, this is an all-new illustrated version, which the original was not, so that’s fun too.

The download is here. May Mary’s tale make you just a little bit merrier.

Plus that, there will be 25 copies of Island of the Madgoing out to Goodreads folk, so yay Penguin Random House!

And the other contest, for Brits!

Today’s the last day to enter this UK-only contest of books-with-biscuits! Toss your name into the virtual hat via Facebookor Twitter. And no, you don’t have to share your biscuits with the rest of us.

But… I didn’t win!?!

I’m very sorry about that. But really, it’s okay, you can still get a book on June 12, it’s just that you’ll have to trade some of your hard-earned cash for it.

There’s a contest coming up! Well, we call it a contest, more of a giveaway. Details are in this Saturday’s newsletter (signup’s hereif you’re not a subscriber) for a chance at all the Russell & Holmes hardbacks. All of them. Signed. In US hardback.

My dear publishers are doing a mystery-thriller sweepstakes giveaway, with Island of the Mad tucked in with seven other new crime fiction books. (You suppose I’m allowed to put my name down…?) Enter it here.

Congratulations to Rebecca Weber, Laura from Pennsylvania, Dee Ayres, Karen Ihms, Randall Price, Alison T, Tina Hoggatt, and Jay Roberts—who all won copies of the advanced galleys for Lockdown. You’ll have them very soon, friends!

And congratulations to…well, me, I suppose—for the sweetheart of a Kirkus review that met me on my way to the Edgars banquet:

King turns from recording the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and his wife (The Murder of Mary Russell, 2016, etc.) to a more hard-edged and contemporary subject: the day a shooter seething with resentment descends on a coastal California school. It’s Career Day at Guadalupe Middle School, and principal Linda McDonald is excited for all the wrong reasons. How is seventh-grader Chaco Cabrera handling his cousin Taco Alvarez’s arrest 11 months ago for the murder of Gloria Rivas? What’s become of Danny Escobedo, the boy Gloria was babysitting, who vanished the night she was killed? Is car dealer Chuck Cuomo likely to make waves over the disappearance of his own daughter, sixth-grader Beatrice? How goes it with sixth-grader Nick Clarkson, who suffered a nervous breakdown after Bee’s disappearance? Will the secret Linda’s husband, Gordon Hugh-Kendrick, is hiding remain safely concealed? What could possibly go wrong when 712 middle school students are asked to spend a whole day dreaming about their futures and meeting with prospective role models like Bee’s aunt, professor Allison Kitagawa, and basketball player Brendan Atcheson’s father, Thomas, who founded the software firm that’s made him the biggest man in San Felipe? In fact, the mundane worries, dreams, memories, and more fully elaborated back stories, variously inflected and amplified by the dozen points of view King flits among as the minutes tick down, are put in chilling perspective by a more urgent threat: a white van ferrying a heavily armed avenger closer and closer to Guadalupe Middle School. “Your purpose is to show how things tie together,” the harried principal reflects as zero hour looms. King delivers, providing both a drama-filled anatomy of the school and a chance for its community to show its best by the way it confronts the worst Career Day imaginable.